There’s something analogous between the Spam-filled Moonpie and the marketing campaign for “Whiteout,” an Antarctica-set thriller whose commercials and trailers suggested an icebound horror film.

Here I am…polluting the internet with more “Whiteout” rhetoric.

One of the things that caught my attention as I have been scanning Antarctic headlines was this story about Qantas offering sightseeing flights over Antarctica:

Qantas A380 Selected For Sightseeing Flights To Antarctica

Fri, 18 Sep ‘09
Passengers Will Spend 4 Hours Over The Antarctic Ice

A Qantas Airbus A380 super jumbo will undertake a unique sightseeing flight to Antarctica – the first commercial flight by an A380 over the south polar region, and the only aircraft permitted to do so on New Year’s Eve.

The flight, organized by Melbourne-based Antarctica Sightseeing Flights, a division of Australian travel company Croydon Travel, will originate in Sydney and fly via Melbourne to reach Antarctica. Passengers will be over the “ice” at midnight and be the first in the world to see the light of the new year.

The chartered A380 will fly figure-eight patterns above the breathtaking polar terrain for up to four hours before heading back to Melbourne and Sydney.

Two other Antarctic flights are also planned for the southern summer – a second A380 service direct from Sydney on 24 January and a Boeing 747-400 from Melbourne on Valentine’s Day, 14 February. All flights are operated by senior Qantas pilots, with the captain in command having previously operated Antarctica sightseeing flights[keep the bold part in mind - it's relevant to something later in my article].

It sounds a bit silly to me. Sightseeing flights in a small airplane where every seat is a window seat makes a bit more sense, but this is just ridiculous. I suppose if you’re someone who just has to see Antarctica, this is a good way to do it relatively cheap and a turnaround flight probably isn’t going to cause one to succumb to polar madness. Regardless of my opinion the sightseeing flights probably have quite the appeal to some people. The flights might even appear banal until you consider what happened on the last sightseeing flight over Antarctica. In November 1979 flight 901 departed Auckland, NZ on a sightseeing flight of Antarctica with 237 passengers and 20 crew members. The captain and co-pilot had not flown the Antarctic flight before, but the flight was considered to be straightforward and they were both experienced pilots. All 257 people on board died when the plane crashed into Mt. Erebus. The information on the flight recorder tapes showed there had been no emergency in the cockpit of the aircraft. Attention was then focussed on the possibility of pilot error, pointing to the inexperience of the two pilots in flying in the Antarctic.

The recovery effort involved over 60 people from nearby McMurdo Station. There are several grim accounts of the recovery effort – imagine working at high-altitude, in the cold and your job is picking up bits and pieces of New Zealand’s largest single tragedy. No thanks!

Here are a few things to keep in mind during this period of adjustment:

Meals & Food
• You will be expected to make choices when it comes to meals, e.g. what to eat, how you would like it prepared and at what time would you like to eat.
• A restaurant is much like the galley except there are many food items from which to choose and there are many different styles of restaurants.
• When finished with a meal at a restaurant, you are obligated to pay for your meal.
• You will likely have to sit at an unfamiliar table at a restaurant, embrace the change.
• Smegma, “The Shocker”, santorum and flatulence are all unacceptable mealtime conversation topics.
• “Freshies” are referred to as fruits and vegetables and are in abundance at most restaurants.

Social Interaction
• No need to obsess over male to female ratios as there are people of both sexes in abundance in many parts of the world.
• Women tend to be self-conscious about their size, thus their size won’t be stenciled in giant numbers on their Carharrt overalls.
• In fact, people in general are fairly unlikely to be seen wearing Carharrt overalls in any social setting. Much like choices in food, choices in clothing will probably be extremely overwhelming. Many people in the real world have a tendency to wear different clothes every day of the week. Oh, and these clothes will have likely been laundered recently.
• If you are a male and wearing a skirt or wig, you may be mistaken for a clown or a homosexual; discretion is advised if you don’t wish to be identified with either of these groups. The good news is that this scenario isn’t likely owing to the fact that wigs and skirts aren’t nearly as readily available as you have become accustomed.
• If you are a female, wearing a skirt or dress doesn’t have to be reserved for special occasions such as midwinter or sunrise dinner. Go crazy, wear one every day if that’s your preference – it probably won’t end up smelling like diesel in the real world.
• People of small size and extremely youthful appearance are most likely children. Though tempting, staring in awe or disgust at children will likely get you labeled as a pervert, which, in the real world is a derogatory label.
• Those awful devices that spew forth advertisements, rhetoric and pseudo-drama are called televisions. Many people, especially in the U.S., seem enamored with these devices and insist on structuring much of their free-time around the so-called programming on them. This is a cultural oddity and must be respected lest you be thought of as cretinous.

Daily Activities
• You may find the transition to unstructured time difficult. Try your best to simply exist without rigid schedules. You probably won’t be able to rely on your outlook scheduler to remind you to do things. Take small steps in structuring your time; for instance, if you feel an unfamiliar twinge in your stomach, you may be feeling slight hunger – that means that it might be mealtime
• Speaking of mealtime, you can eat any time you like so no need to go to dinner just because you’re afraid you’ll miss out and be hungry later. If you are hungry later, you can simply eat
• Your day won’t be broken into four uniform blocks of time book-ended by snacks and coffee in the galley. It’ll be tough, but if you work at it, you can probably make the necessary adjustments and eventually find this way of life tolerable until you can get back to The Ice.

Most important, take lots of pictures and bring back stories for your travelogue next season!

Mawson continued on, facing even greater adversity. He fell into a crevasse, but was saved when his sledge acted as an anchor. Mawson admitted to considering cutting the rope at that point. The soles of his feet separated from the feet themselves. He cut his sledge in half with a pen knife and dragged it approximately 160km back to camp. Upon his arrival to the base camp, he discovered that his ship had left just days earlier. There was a party of six men left behind in case survivors returned – this party was able to radio the ship, but poor weather thwarted a rescue attempt. One of the men left behind succumbed to polar madness very early on, was locked up and eventually institutionalized upon the party’s return to Australia.

Admiral Byrd’s historic (but controversial) flight over the South Pole is seen as the line of demarcation between the heroic age of exploration and modern exploration. Things have gotten easier in Antarctica, but that doesn’t mean the crazies don’t still find their way down here and the winter seems to be their time to shine. There are stories about one man violently bludgeoning another with a hammer, mutinous crews, a doctor who attempted to build a time machine and a man who was convinced that aliens would land. More minor symptoms include memory loss, quick tempers and apparently hallucinations. Popular opinion is that everyone wintering in Antarctica will go crazy to some degree.

During my first winter at The South Pole I was quick to dismiss as myth the things that I had heard people talk about. I really do believe that people embellish the symptoms of T3 (AKA winterover toast) a great deal. I did, however, have a minor experience of my own in which I completely lost a four-hour block of time. The incident did at least cause me to be a believer.

This season I may have actually “lost it” in a more classic way, perhaps the isolation and lack of stimulation are finally getting to me, but the other day when I was returning from the Marr glacier I saw what I thought was a person (which my mind quickly turned into people). I went as far as to radio this sighting in. Upon my return to station quite a few folks were out with binoculars trying to see what I thought I saw. By this point I was quite a bit less sure about what I had seen, but to satisfy my own curiosity I went back out with another person and a pair of binoculars only to discover what I had seen were rocks that looked like a person and a bird fluttering which added movement to the scene. I expected to catch quite a bit of razzing, but it was fairly mild actually. Perhaps nobody wants to try to push the guy who’s seeing things too far or perhaps it’s because I turned the thing around pretty quickly by calling them all suckers.

At any rate, it might be time for me to take some time off. More to follow.

Line of dialogue:
“Do you want to buy a dog?”

Character:
A temperamental, continental chef.

Sound:
Opening a can of drink

Here is the submission from Palmer Station:

Direct Download Link (right click – “save link as” or “save target as” or whatever) : http://www.vagabumming.com/video/GashDance.mov

or for the bandwidth impaired: http://www.vagabumming.com/video/GashDanceweb.mov

Going to be at McMurdo station Antarctica in early October? Head up to the carp shop break room during flight operations at the ice runway for a glimpse into what I mean. A handful of leftover winter carpenters and a few that have been on Ice since August will be gathered around, vying for their turn on the binoculars so that they can proudly proclaim “I saw her first!”. The computer savvy among these gnarled and randy boys will have already done their homework, perusing the flight manifest to determine the ratio of M:F (which is typically 3:1 by the way). Early October is an exciting time despite, or perhaps because of this strange ritual.

If you happen to go to a smaller station, or as the population decreases in preparation for winter, this phenomenon grows ever stronger and the ratio becomes THE hot topic for a short period of time.

At Palmer, the winter population is actually dynamic so the hobbyist statisticians here get more than one chance to examine the inbound manifest. An apparent typo made April’s ship manifest into something quite fun. One of the astute statisticians happened to notice that one of the passengers on the list was neither M nor F but rather ‘R’ and the speculation as to whether or not “Megan” was a pirate led to countless hours of fun and frivolity. I know, I know, doesn’t take much.

Megan showed up and….well, she is a pirate…ACK!!! a pirate. Somebody summon a ninja!

theRRRe she is on the left, posing with the science group she is here with. Turns out she is a teacher from an Alabama high school here on an outreach program and her school’s mascot is a pirate. She keeps really good daily journals and has posted quite a few pictures on her school’s website: http://www.fairhopehs.com

During the season that Herzog came to The Ice, another film crew was also present – a crew that actually wanted to be there and had to work to get to Antarctica. A crew that; when seeking funding was met with responses along the lines of “Isn’t Herzog filming in Antarctica this year?”. A crew that was led by documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion.

Antarcticans pay homage to Anne Aghion's film crew during the annual Halloween party - 2006

Anne’s Antarctic documentary is entitled Ice People and covers a wide spectrum of what it’s like to live and work at an Antarctic research station and field camp. In many ways the viewer may feel like they’re right there amongst the grittiness of McMurdo and conversely the majesty that is Antarctica; all the while imagining themselves exposed to the fierceness of the wind or the constant drone of a diesel engine somewhere in the background.

The greatest thing about this film is the same thing that is great about other Aghion films. It was completely devoid of her ego and became solely about the people and the social dynamics of life on the Ice.

Anne’s film-making style is a huge departure from the spoon-feeding that Hollywood film viewers may have come to expect. She challenges the viewer to take an active role in their own entertainment, likely leaving them less entertained but more enlightened as a result.

Want to know what it’s really like to live and work in Antarctica? You’ll probably have to get a job and go there yourself but the next closest thing to actually experiencing the harshest of continents for yourself is to watch Anne Aghion’s Ice People.

Check out the trailer:

I didn’t know Dr. Houseal, but I know people who did. I only vaguely know the man who was rescued in Greenland. But I have learned about both of these people through the anecdotes that are told about them; and that’s the way it is in “The Program” (the United States Antarctic Program). More and more I learn about people and events through the stories that are told about them. The stories in and about Antarctica and the USAP are some of the best you could ever hope to hear. I know I’m not the first to think it would be a good idea to start writing these stories down and put them together in a book; and in fact, this has been done on a couple of different occasions with varying degrees of success. Trouble is, many of these stories are only funny or interesting if you have inside knowledge. Things that are bizarre on The Ice are, oddly, normal in much of the world…it’s the context of events that make them funny or interesting here. Nonetheless; I’m going to try to put together and pass along a story about the name of a McMurdo band.

In order for this story to make any sense at all, you first have to understand that, in accordance with the Antarctic Conservation Act and surely parts of the Antarctic Treaty (are they one in the same…???…I digress) all waste generated by those engaged in scientific research must be removed from the continent. In certain conditions, human waste is disposed of locally – but by and large everything that is taken in will eventually be taken out – “pack it in, pack it out” on a Brobdingnagian scale. The Program has a group of people who are in charge of facilitating the removal of all of the waste. Trash at McMurdo is sorted into several categories with much of it eventually being recycled once it does get back stateside. One category of trash is “mixed paper” – pretty self-explanatory and mostly what you would expect; a great deal of office-generated waste with a smattering of domestic waste-paper thrown in for good measure. Discarded magazines belong in the “mixed paper” trash category.

The next thing that you must understand for this story to make much sense is that McMurdo is pretty much a man camp. Sure, over the years it’s been toned down quite a bit, much to the chagrin of a few old-timers but probably, really for the best. It may be a kinder, gentler kind of man camp, but it’s man camp nonetheless – you will see things at McMurdo that you certainly wouldn’t see at your workplace back in the states. In man camp, there is a reduced level of outside stimuli. Days run together until they’re all the same….hopefully I’ve done a fair job of setting the tone here.

Imagine a group of people tasked with sorting trash in a stimuli poor man camp. Certain items are removed from the waste stream to be “recycled” locally. If you’re tasked with sorting “mixed paper” and the odd porno mag passes in front of you from time to time, given the environment you’re in, you’d be fairly likely to remove it from the waste stream and save it for later. Imagine this same thing happening over and over again until eventually you have a massive box (tri-wall [20 cubic feet maybe?]) full of porno mags – eventually it all has to go away.

The Program’s waste management team becomes intimately aware of where “away” is when something is thrown away. Every year a couple of them go to (at the time of this story, Port Hadlock, WA) meet the ship and ensure that the waste goes where it needs to go. All of the tri-wall boxes and drums and other containers of waste are put inside of large shipping containers for transit across the ocean. At the other end, these boxes and drums are removed from the shipping containers.

On one particular waste run, one particular box happened to break open during transit and when the shipping container was then opened and a mountain of porno mags came spilling out, the phrase “Porn Spill” was born as the occurrence was reported over the radio. The term has lived on in infamy and each year the McMurdo waste department forms a band with the name “Porn Spill” – many years the line-up varies and includes members from other departments, but the name lives on and the story is told and re-told and has become a part of Antarctic Lore.